By Dianne Mathiowetz, Workers World, 30 March 2000

At an appearance in Federal Court in Montgomery, Ala., on
March 21, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin--formerly known as H. Rap
Brown--declared that he is innocent of the charges that he
killed a sheriff and wounded a second deputy in Fulton
County, Ga., on March 16.

Al-Amin, a respected leader in the Muslim community of
Atlanta for close to 25 years, had reportedly fled after
the incident on March 16. He was the subject of a
nationwide hunt led by the FBI until he was captured four
days later in Lowndes County, Ala.

Al-Amin is being represented by C.L. Chestnut, a famed
Black civil rights attorney and one of the first Black
lawyers in Alabama. Chestnut will fight the order to
extradite Al-Amin to Georgia.

An army of about 150 FBI and other police agents, aided by
tracking dogs and an infrared radar helicopter, arrested
Al-Amin in White Hall, Ala., a small town between
Montgomery and Selma.

Al-Amin has a long history with the Black community of
Lowndes and its neighboring counties. That is where, in
1965, he spent his first years as an organizer for the
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
registering Black voters.

At the time, this area was a stronghold for ardent
segregationists who ruled with a violent fist against any
who challenged the status quo. In response, a mass rally of
sharecroppers and farmers formed the Lowndes County Freedom
Organization and took the black panther as its symbol.

Over the years, Al-Amin has returned many times to Lowndes
County.

Al-Amin's old civil rights associates, as well as many of
the residents of White Hall, expressed disbelief in the
police charges. He is regarded as a hero for standing up to
the entrenched racist hierarchy 35 years ago and as a
friend who still works to better the condition of the
majority Black population.

Many of today's Black elected officials, including White
Hall's local sheriff and mayor, credit Al-Amin for making
their elections possible.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

With each day since the shooting, the details released by
the authorities in Atlanta have changed, raising more
questions in the minds of many about what really happened
on March 16.

Officials said that that the Fulton County sheriff and
deputy were serving a warrant on Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.

The arrest warrant was issued following the failure of Al-
Amin to appear in a Cobb County court on charges arising
from a traffic stop on May 31, 1999. At that time, police
charged him with driving without proof of insurance, and
theft by taking and impersonating a police officer.

But these charges would not have been difficult to
address. Al-Amin reportedly had bought the car a few months
before. And the badge that the cop saw in his wallet was
issued to him as an auxiliary police officer in White Hall,
Ala. The badges were given to civilians who assisted at
events like parades or football games.

The police version of the events on March 16 is as
follows. The sheriff and deputy went to the address on the
warrant at about 10 p.m. The community store that Al-Amin
has operated for years was locked and no one there, so they
got back in their car and drove around the block. When they
returned, a black Mercedes was parked at the corner near
the store.

Police claim that when they ordered the occupant to get
out of the car and to show his hands the person began
firing a .223 caliber assault rifle. Although the two
sheriffs were wearing bullet-proof vests, each was shot
several times in the lower body and extremities. They fired
their guns at least 10 times.

Investigators discovered a blood trail leaving the scene
and followed it to an abandoned house a couple of blocks
away. Meanwhile, the Mercedes was reportedly driven away by
an unknown person.

Police asserted that the shooter had been wounded. Yet
paramedics examined Al-Amin on March 20 and found that he
had no injuries.

Immediately after the March 16 shootings, the 4-square
block area surrounding the scene was cordoned off. More
than 100 police began a house-to-house search. Helicopters
with search lights circled overhead throughout the night.
SWAT team members and police with attack dogs roamed the
streets.

This area is home to more than 100 Muslim families who
have settled in the West End community since Al-Amin
founded a mosque there in 1976.

POLICE, MEDIA DEMONIZED AL-AMIN

The very first news stories described the incident as an
ambush by a gunman who "had a vendetta for police
officers." Al-Amin, despite being a respected community
leader and Muslim cleric for almost 25 years, was
immediately labeled as violent and dangerous by Atlanta law
enforcement spokesmen. Following the death of one of the
officers, the inflammatory rhetoric escalated.

Every newscast and newspaper story identifies Al-Amin as a
former Black Panther Party member, complete with 1960s
images of H. Rap Brown in dark sunglasses and black
clothing.

While this demonizing is an obvious attempt to sway public
opinion against Al-Amin, it makes clear that it is his
central role in the Black Power movement which shook the
racist foundations of this country that has earned him the
undying hatred of the ruling class.

Born in 1943 in Baton Rouge, La., Al-Amin attended
Southern University from 1960-1964. His experiences growing
up in segregated Louisiana served to fuel his passion to
fight injustice and in 1965, he became an organizer for the
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Alabama. He
later became its chairperson.

Along with Kwame Toure--known then as Stokely Carmichael--
and other young Black activists, Al-Amin developed a
revolutionary analysis of both domestic and foreign issues.

Throughout the colonized countries of Africa, Asia and
Latin America, national liberation movements were fighting
to free themselves from economic and political domination
by the U.S. and European powers.

During that period of time, the U.S. was actively involved
in suppressing popular struggles for independence and
freedom through military intervention and assassination.
>From Guatamala to Iran to the Congo, U.S. foreign policy
was set to preserve the control of the rich few. The
Vietnam War with its daily "body counts" and massive air
assaults was escalating.

In the U.S., the civil rights struggle against Jim Crow
segregation, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was being
met by murder, bombings, arson and beatings. Organized
racist thugs, such as those in the Ku Klux Klan, operated
openly--often in collusion with local police authorities.

It was in this context that Al-Amin and others formulated
the demand for "Black Power" and advocated the right of
armed self-defense against attack. His oft-quoted statement
that "violence is as American as cherry pie" is an accurate
commentary, then and now, about government policy.

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense had drawn the
wrath of the government with its community organizing
against police brutality, the infusion of drugs into Black
neighborhoods and the low-level of social services provided
for Black people.

Al-Amin was made an honorary member of the Black Panther
Party in 1968 and named a Minister of Justice.

Political and social unrest was sweeping the country. Al-
Amin and others were targeted by the police as part of the
infamous COINTELPRO. Thousands of anti-war activists,
leaders of Black, Native, Latino, and Asian liberation
organizations and civil rights advocates were arrested and
jailed, often on bogus charges. False and planted evidence,
coerced and phony testimony, and set-ups tainted their
convictions by police informers and provocateurs.

Al-Amin was charged with inciting riot and arson in 1967
in Cambridge, Md. Following a speech he made at a rally, he
was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant. A rebellion
broke out in the community and a number of buildings burned
down.

Brown went underground before his trial on the incitement
to riot charges. A nationwide hunt was launched. He was
arrested in 1971 in New York City near the scene of a bar
hold-up.

While serving five years in prison for robbery, he
converted to Islam and took the name Jamil Abdullah Al-
Amin.

He moved to Atlanta in 1976 after being paroled from
prison. Al-Amin opened a grocery and community store in an
area of Atlanta devastated by poverty and drugs. A leader
of the Atlanta Community Mosque, Al-Amin became a powerful
force in the neighborhood against drug dealers, slum
landlords, brutal cops and neglectful city agencies. He is
widely credited by the residents of having saved the
community from these criminal and anti-social elements.

Although no longer identifying himself as a political
revolutionary, Al-Amin advocated the teaching of the
Islamic principle that it is righteous to resist tyranny
and oppression. He continued to assert the right to self-
defense.

In 1995, Al-Amin was arrested by members of the FBI Anti-
Terrorist unit and ATF agents along with Atlanta police for
shooting a man in the leg in West End Park. The case fell
apart after the victim asserted that he had never
identified Al-Amin as the shooter, but that he had been
coerced by the police to name Al-Amin.

Police have publicly complained in Atlanta about the lack
of cooperation they are receiving from the West End
community. Many neighbors have been quoted as saying the
police version of events does not square with the man they
have known almost 25 years.

Muslim leaders throughout the city have urged the media
not "to accuse, try and convict Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-
Amin."

Al-Amin only had a brief moment to speak to reporters at
his Montgomery hearing. He stated that his arrest was the
result of a "government conspiracy."